5 Top Tips to get buy-in for your Fundraising Ops Team
As a commitment to our sector, we like to add value where we can, for several years I have been hosting and creating events for professionals to share advice and insights within their operational capacity. I was delighted to have Jenelle Murray King chair our most recent session, Jenelle is passionate about delivering good service both internally and externally and is sees operations as a pivotal and vital piece of the fundraising puzzle. Jenelle has worked tirelessly to promote operations functions to show that these teams aren’t just admin/ support departments, but much more. These departments offer strategy, insight and enable fundraising.
At the round table, we were joined by a range of contacts from the sector, some that sat on their charity’s SMT and others that didn’t. What I took away from this session was that operations teams need a voice, these teams need to be able to promote their skills and expertise and ensure that income generators are working in partnership and utilising their expert skills. We discussed ad hoc presence at SMT meetings or knowledge-sharing sessions to better highlight their value and importance.
We talked a lot about investment and being able to retain staff members, we discussed the need for more developmental opportunities and that fundraising operation isn’t always a step into fundraising, supporter care and operations is a career path in its own right and this needs more championing.
Top tips and take ways:
- Tailor your style and what you share to suit the audience, 1 person said they were able to win investment after producing stats and graphs, this suited their style and won credibility
- Operations enable fundraisers to deliver
- Label soft skills as relationship building
- Talk about yourself/ team with confidence and identify areas of contribution and value
- Operations teams offer focus, insight and above all else provide strong supporter retention
Quote of the day:
“We can build the engine, but we cannot drive the car”
For further information on our upcoming events please visit our website https://www.ashbyjenkinsrecruitment.co.uk/blog/
